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The Story of Life by Richard Southwood (2003)

By Lynn Dicks

The Story of Life by Richard Southwood, Oxford University Press, £19.99, ISBN 0198525907 Reviewed by Lynn Dicks

IN THE beginning, Earth was hostile&colon; alkaline, oxygen free and bombarded with asteroids. If you believe, as Richard Southwood does, that life originated here, his book tells you its entire history. How the first membranes and nucleic acids transformed into the myriad plant, animal and microbial life we know today. It is some story.

There’s high drama as the entire planet is encased in ice just as life was getting a grip, and great success stories. Evolution goes off like a bomb. Take the dinosaurs. Their …